Illustrated herein are methods and systems relating to image and document production. Embodiments will be described in detail with reference to electrophotographic or xerographic marking or printing engines. However, it is to be appreciated that embodiments associated with other marking or rendering technologies are contemplated.
Traditionally, a printer prints a job as the job arrives to the printer. In a networked printer environment, a network server presents the jobs queued at the network to the printer for printing sequentially. The printer is traditionally a two-phase work center. In the first phase of the printing function, the printer processes the job for rasterization. The process is known as raster image processing (or RIP). In the second phase of the printing function, the printer prints the job.
In order to provide increased production speed, document processing systems that include a plurality of printing or marking engines have been developed. Incorporated by reference, by way of background and where appropriate, are the following references relating to what have been variously called “tandem engine” printers, “cluster printing,” “output merger” and the like: U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,579,446; 4,587,532; 5,272,511; 5,568,246; 5,570,172; 5,995,721; 5,596,416; 6,402,136; a 1991 “Xerox Disclosure Journal” publication of November-December 1991, Vol. 16, No. 6, pp. 381-383; and the Xerox Aug. 3, 2001 “TAX” publication product announcement entitled “Cluster Printing Solution Announced.”
These “cluster printing systems” enable high print speeds or print rates by grouping a number of slower speed marking engines in parallel. The systems are very cost competitive and have an advantage over single engine systems because of their redundancy. For example, if one marking engine fails, the system can still function at reduced throughput by using the remaining marking engines. However, to print jobs containing a mix of monochrome, MICR (Magnetic Ink Character Recognition) or color prints with cluster printing systems, print shops typically split the job into parts and run those parts on separate color, MICR or monochrome print engine, transferring the output prints to either an off-line collator or to an in-line inserter to assemble the pages into the job correctly. Alternatively, the customer may have to run the entire monochrome+color job on a color machine or run a monochrome+MICR job on a MICR machine. Both of these cases result in a higher printing cost for the job.
In this regard, several companies provide elementary mixed color and monochrome page job processing software, such as Xerox FreeFlow, EFI Balance, and SOFHA MultiFLOW. Typically, the mixed color/monochrome job is rasterized or “RIPped” a first time and all color pages are printed on a color printer. A job ticket is automatically created. The job ticket programs the color pages as inserts into the monochrome print stream. The color pages are then unloaded from the color printer and placed in an inserter tray in the monochrome engine. The job is then run again, this time printing all the monochrome pages. The pre-programmed job ticket inserts the color pages into the mono page stream in the correct location. While this process is somewhat simpler than performing these tasks entirely manually, it does require human interaction that is both time intensive and error prone in that the color pages may be loaded in incorrect order, with incorrect orientation and the like.
Thus, there is a need for a means to provide the customer the ability to print mixed output jobs (e.g., monochrome+color, monochrome+MICR, etc.) automatically as a single integrated job, while still allowing the customer the flexibility to use that same equipment to run separate monochrome and color or MICR jobs simultaneously without reconfiguring the hardware.